Unofficial news and tips about Google

June 16, 2009

Artist Themes for Google Chrome

After adding themes to iGoogle and Gmail, Google intends to skin Chrome and some of the initial themes will be created by famous artists. New York Times reports that not all of the illustrators and designers contacted by Google were happy to license their works for free.

"While we don't typically offer monetary compensation for these projects, through the positive feedback that we have heard thus far we believe these projects provide a unique and exciting opportunity for artists to display their work in front of millions of people," explained a Google representative.

Some recent Chrome builds include the option to "reset to default theme", but Google doesn't offer a gallery of themes or some guidelines for creating your own theme.

Immediately after Chrome's launch, many people started to create themes for the browser by editing the default.dll file, but the file is overwritten by the automatic updater and the format was changed in the latest releases.

Note: the screenshot shows a theme created by Google. To install it, you need to install a developer version of Chrome and to enable extensions.

"While we don't typically offer monetary compensation for these projects, through the positive feedback that we have heard thus far we believe these projects provide a unique and exciting opportunity for artists to display their work in front of millions of people"

Why not pay them AND give them the opportunity to have their works displayed in front of millions of people?

Designer Gary Taxali complained about this a while ago in a blog post but he may have it removed now... http://drawger.com/taxman/index.php?article_id=7693

@Alex Chitu: Yeah Themes are extensions (in chrome) but it seems to be as Google is doing unimportant things first, such as theme extensions, and not other type of extension support. Though testing theme extensions might be easier to do that Firefox-like extensions.

That theme you posted is working in the latest dev channel build (3.0.189.0). About the top half of the omnibar is covered by a white bar, though. Also, barring some blurring in the backgrounds of inactive tabs, Aero Glass is 'ignored'.

@Philipp Lenssen: I'm not sure why this is a big deal. Perhaps Google could pay artists to create themes... but why *should* they?

Plenty of great themes, professional and user-generated, are available for iGoogle, Firefox, etc.Google *could* pay artists to create themes for it, but there's no reason they need to or ought to.It's not as if artists are compelled to accept Google's offer if they don't want to, are they?

The real crime here is that Google did not contact me-- internationally recognized artist pablo solomon at pablosolomon.com best known for my drawings and sculptures of dancers. Is Google afraid to be associated with an artist who does nudes? Or is this just an amazing oversight on their part? For being the big gun on the internet search ranch, Google apparently failed to Google me-- pablo solomon--and thus failed to get an illustration from possibly the world's top living artist. Should they get a second chance? Will this gross mistake result in their eventually filing Chapter 11? Will Chrome lose its polish without pablo's art? Join in the millions out their voicing their support for me--pablo solomon--to be included in Goggle Chrome.